PART II THE PARDON (continued 2)

For a long time he believed he had done all he could for his lady, being fond of her, respecting, honouring, and never being false to her, but nothing more. He had not understood that Maria Simonetti’s life and happiness were in his two hands. Not having understood that, he had let Maria’s life languish in sentimental and moral misery; so that she sought elsewhere the way of magnifying all her faculties and sensations. When he understood it was too late: that was afterwards. It was afterwards that, intolerant of lies, inept at deception, Maria Guasco Simonetti had left her husband’s house and had fled with Marco Fiore.

Then Emilio Guasco had seen all the error of his existence, of his indifference, his want of any abandonment, of any enthusiasm. Alone, in a suddenly deserted house and dishonoured, he discovered his original sin, aridity, that grave sin which separates us from everything beautiful and everybody beloved; which makes those flee from us fatally whom we do not know how to love. The tragedy which that day had brought him in the flight of his wife with her lover had still more paralysed Emilio’s mind, which was incapable of efficacious fury, incapable of sustained impulse, and capable only of sorrow and a slow and pointless sadness.

He had not acted and rushed after Maria and Marco; but had remained at home to suffer in silence. A part of the society in which he lived called it an immense disgrace, because to all of them he was what is termed a perfect husband; a smaller part, more intelligent and original, had proclaimed that he deserved no better treatment, since he had not known how to love Maria worthily, and that, in fact, he had annoyed and exasperated her. Secretly, in the long examinations of conscience which every man makes with himself in the hours of moral crisis, Emilio thought those right who had indicted him as the first author of his wife’s funereal act. He saw, on one of his sleepless nights, with the eyes of his soul all that he ought to have been and had not been. Certain deep truths of the spirit and the heart, hitherto unknown to him, appeared to him in vivid light. As in all great revolutions which transform and remake the inner life of a being, many new habits were formed by him in the three years of solitude and abandonment, singular habits different and contradictory to each other.

While Maria’s flight with Marco had given him acute anguish, the moral figure of his wife appeared prouder and bolder in its act of liberation, and if the husband still carried with him all the pain of the offence, so as to feel the impression of a bleeding wound for three years, the man had admired in Maria her lofty contempt of every minor good to obtain the one supreme good. While Maria was far away, as if lost in the vast world, Emilio saw her again near him palpitating with beauty and life, and he began to love her in solitary silence, vainly and uselessly. He surprised himself into desiring and wanting her more than ever, and in his empty love and desire he ended by knowing that powerful and terrible instinct of love—jealousy.

He had always marvelled when he saw in others the interior torturing lashes of jealousy, and its external manifestations. Now he is a victim to this gloomy and fascinating force which comes from the lowest elements of the human system, but which dominates a man entirely. Sometimes he would give his blood to snatch his wife away from the arms of Marco Fiore, at other times he was seized by an exasperation which almost led him to a crime. Then he had to leave Rome and go far away where only memory could follow him. On his return, through the natural power of his equilibrium, he was always calm, patient, and sad.

At last, at the end of three years, so long to a heart which had never known how to love, which perhaps had still not learned to love better but was not inept to suffer, Emilio, with concealed curiosity and anxiety, had learnt that the amorous folly of Marco and Maria had begun to languish, had become a folly’s shadow, and was lapsing into a pale usage. From this knowledge which reached him from reliable sources, from secret inquiries which he had made with extreme caution, knowing how every day that love shadow was vanishing more and more, a unique sentiment, derived from so many opposite sentiments at war with each other, had raised his heart almost to heroism. This was the sentiment of human and Christian pity for a miserable woman who had wanted and still wanted to give her life to her dream, who instead saw all her dream vanish before her in a time which seemed as short as a flash of lightning. Anger long repressed, sorrow long concealed, the offence which wounds without ever a wound appearing, love rendered more supreme and consuming in jealousy itself,—all in Emilio Guasco was sunk in this tender compassion for Maria. He felt within himself all the evangelical virtue of charity, perhaps stronger than any other sentimental impulse. He was the good Samaritan who rescues the dying man on the road-side, doctors his cruel wounds, and pours out the balsam that heals.

Thus the pardon had been offered by Emilio Guasco to the wife who had betrayed and left him. When he had sent her word he had thought nothing more of the past or the future; he had thought only of healing the poor creature’s wounds, struck by passion’s cruel and implacable weapons; he felt within himself a new soul greater, more generous, and superior to sophisms and the world’s axioms. There seemed to be something heroic in his heart, which raised and exalted him as at no other time in his life. The immense tenderness he felt for her reacted on him; he pitied and admired himself like the heroic person in a romance whose story he sometimes read. The nearer the day of her return approached, the more his emotion increased, the more the noble and sublime thing, which is pardon, the law which Christ has given as the most supreme, seemed to find in him a pure interpreter. So on that April evening in the presence of the woman, pale and trembling as he had never seen her before and would never see her again, he had pronounced those Christian words which cancel, absolve, and redeem—

“I pardon you, Maria.”

But suddenly afterwards, in a flash, he felt this unique and noble sentiment, this Christian pity, destroyed within him, as if it could only give him one supreme moment of heroism. He felt all the old sentiments rise again in his mind, contending among themselves—anger, suffering, love and jealousy, and he was seized again in their power without guide or will.

XI

Maria Guasco was proceeding minutely to the completion of her toilette. That morning she was wearing a cloth dress of maroon colour, cut in the English fashion, through the jacket of which a blouse of white Irish lace was to be seen; the full skirt in big pleats discovered the neat feet shod in black kid. A large straw hat, with a circlet of red roses and a thin veil, was placed over the chestnut hair, affording a glimpse of its waves over the forehead, temple and neck. In her simple dress without ornaments, and in its exact lines, she looked enchantingly young. She said to Chiara, who was hovering round offering her gloves, parasol, and purse—

“Let your master know that I am ready and waiting for him here.”

Meanwhile she buttoned her yellow deerskin gloves and verified the contents of her purse.

“The master begs Your Excellency to oblige him with your presence in the study,” said Chiara on returning in a low voice.

Maria frowned slightly, and for an instant the colour left her cheeks. Then, as if her will predominated immediately, she proceeded towards her husband’s study, and not a shadow of her recent emotion appeared on her recomposed face.

Seated behind his desk Emilio was writing a letter and smoking a cigarette. He did not raise his head.

“Well, Emilio,” asked his wife in a soothing voice, standing in the middle of the room, “aren’t you dressed for the meet?”

“No,” he replied, raising his head from his letter absently, “I am not dressed.”

“Wasn’t this the hour?” she continued gently; “ten o’clock, I think.”

“Yes, ten o’clock,” and he lowered his head, resuming his writing.

Maria’s gloved hand nervously clutched the onyx knob of her parasol.

“Well, well,” she asked again, with a certain insistency. Emilio let his pen fall, throwing it on the table, pushed the letter aside, and leaning back in his chair regarded his wife for a long time earnestly without speaking.

“I have decided not to go to this last meet.”

“Ah!” said Maria only.

Then, as if it annoyed her to remain standing before her husband’s desk, her eyes sought a chair. She found one a little bit away and sat down, still holding her parasol and purse, in the attitude of a lady paying a visit.

Both were silent; though, as ever since her return, he fixed his eyes on his wife’s face and person with a curiosity half thoughtful and half observant, with an attitude of acute investigation which sometimes embarrassed Maria.

“Still, Emilio,” she said in a low voice, to break the silence, “you are so fond of fox-hunting.”

“I like it very much, it is true,” he replied.

“And it will be a year before you can begin again.”

“That is true.”

“Didn’t you decide yesterday evening to go?”

“Certainly I did decide to go; but a night has passed on it.”

“You don’t sleep at night and think of the meet at Cecilia Metella?” she asked, trying to joke.

“Eh, one doesn’t always sleep,” he replied, with an irritable gesture of annoyance.

She was silent. Then she raised her head resolutely.

“Since I should have accompanied you, may I consider myself free?” she asked, with some impatience.

“You have other plans?” he murmured, looking at her again fixedly.

“I have had no others from the moment that it was arranged that we should go out together,” she replied quickly.

“I beg your pardon for having made you dress; you have lost a toilette.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, and she began to trace the arabesque designs of the carpet with her parasol.

“Emilio?” she said suddenly.

“Maria!”

“Why don’t you go alone to Cecilia Metella? Go and put on your pink; the victoria is ready, and will take you to where Francesco is waiting with the horses. Go now.”

Her tone was quiet, indifferent, and persuasive.

“No!” he exclaimed, with an angry gesture; “I don’t want to.”

“Emilio,” she continued, in a voice still more persuasive, “I know that it is on my account that you are not going to Cecilia Metella. I beg you not to renounce this pleasure.”

“Thank you; I shall not go,” he said drily.

Maria got up suddenly, as if she had nothing further to say.

“Where are you going?” he exclaimed, rising from his seat and following her for a few steps.

“To my room,” she replied, a little surprised; “then I shall go out.”

“To go where?” he asked again harshly.

“I don’t know; I shall go for a walk somewhere,” she said, still more surprised.

“Where?” and anger trembled in the demand.

“Emilio!” she exclaimed in sweet reproach; “Emilio!”

He changed colour.

“I beg your pardon, Maria, I beg your pardon.”

He threw himself on a large sofa, without taking the hand she offered him. The woman remained standing, and looked at him.

“Shall we go out together, Emilio?” she asked patiently.

“No.”

“Let us go outside the city where there is nobody.”

“No, no.”

“In the carriage to Villa Pamphily? It is such a beautiful morning, and the air is so soft. Come, do.”

“No, no, no!” he exclaimed, without looking at her.

“Well, then, what ought I to do?” she asked patiently.

“Nothing.”

“What do you wish to do?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you wish me to remain? Do you wish me to go?” and the tone was one of sublime patience.

He understood it and melted.

“Maria, you are treating me like a child. Do you think I am ill? I have white hair, but I am not infirm.”

She noticed all the signs of anger and suffering.

“At times we are ill without knowing it, and we mustn’t repulse an affectionate hand.”

“What charity!” he exclaimed, with irony.

“What are you irritated about, Emilio? Because of the sentiment or the person?” she asked.

“For the two things,” he replied, with asperity.

“Ah!” she said, and her hand, trembling a little, found the handle of her parasol. Again she made as if to go away without greeting him, without turning round.

“Are you offended?” he cried to her back; “you will end by hating me.”

“I am not offended,” she replied, stopping with lowered eyes and speaking slowly; “I have tamed my pride, Emilio, in the contact of life, and I am not offended. I can hate no one.”

He looked at her peculiarly and gloomily, with the strange insistence of a man who wished to extract a tremendous secret from a glance. But she did not see it. The question which was trembling on Emilio’s lips disappeared. He lapsed again into confusion and silence.

“Are you going to your bank?” she asked, to say something.

“Yes, for a moment,” he replied absently.

“Shall you come home to lunch?”

“Yes, at the usual hour.”

“What are you going to do afterwards?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“I am going to stay at home just now, and later——” she continued monotonously.

“Later?” he asked, with a start.

“I have a meeting.”

“Ah!” he replied, looking at her.

“With Flaminia Colonna; a work of charity,” she explained, somewhat coldly.

“Flaminia has always continued to love you.”

“She has continued to,” she answered bitterly, biting her lip, growing a little pale, “like any other friend.”

“Do you go out together?”

“Yes,” she replied, still paler; “are you surprised?” and the question was put harshly.

“No,” he said, speaking with difficulty, so great was his emotion; “Flaminia Colonna is a woman and a friend ... while I——”

“While you?” she asked.

“I am a man, a husband.”

There was a deep silence between them.

“Is that the reason why you didn’t go to Cecilia Metella with me?” she resumed.

“That is the reason,” he replied.

“What were you fearing?” in a voice still deeper.

“Ridicule. Every one would have laughed at me, seeing me with you.”

She fell back. Her eyes grew clouded, but she had the strength not to open her mouth, to walk away without turning, leaving the man who had told his secret stretched on the sofa like a miserable weakling.

XII

The ices were being served and the dinner was drawing to a close. All of a sudden, in the midst of the slightly laboured and frivolous conversation which occasionally gave place to the species of pompous gravity, Francesco Serlupi, a young man celebrated for his blunders, which assumed either a grotesque or dramatic aspect, again committed one of them.

“Do you know that the Fiore couple have returned home from their honeymoon? It seems that things are not going too well.”

A glacial silence fell on all.

Maria Guasco, behind the huge mass of white lilies and red roses, which almost hid her, had not even moved an eyelid; Emilio, taciturn as ever, had lowered his eyes. The other guests, Flaminia Colonna, Gianni Provana, and the Senator, Fabio Guasco, seemed distracted.

“It seems that the Costanzi is to be closed for a week,” remarked Gianni Provana, in an attempt to change the conversation.

But Francesco Serlupi stuck to his gaucherie, and proclaimed obstinately—

“However, it is as I have said, Marco Fiore returned to the club yesterday, the day following his return, and yesterday he was at the races without Vittoria.”

Again a heavy silence. Maria, with a fervid glance, invoked the aid of Flaminia. She promptly, with her penetrating voice, which was the complement of her dark and proud figure, and of her beauty full of grace and expression, said—

“I am not surprised at it. As a matter of fact Marco Fiore has always liked a club life; his mother, Donna Arduina, had always complained to me about it. Besides, Vittoria has such a reserved and timid character.” She emphasised her slow and tactful remark, fixing her sweet grey eyes on Francesco, to make him understand that he must say no more on the subject. He, as usual, understood too late the mischief he had done, and became silent, keeping his head bent over his plate, not daring to look at his hosts, anxious to escape, as he always did, when he discovered he had committed an enormous indiscretion.

“Are these delicious early peaches from Lama, Emilio?” asked Mario Colonna, to divert the conversation better, alluding to the great property of Casa Guasco near Terni.

“Yes,” replied his host immediately, glad to be able to open his mouth and speak of something else; “my gardens there work miracles, and also my gardeners. Every day new flowers and fruit arrive.”

“Oh, you must be very happy about it, Maria,” observed Flaminia, with a good-natured smile on her lips.

“Oh, most happy,” she murmured.

“You ought to love La Lama, Donna Maria,” remarked Francesco Serlupi, in an endeavour to mend matters; “it is some time since you were there?”

But the question was put in a low voice, besides, the dinner was finished, so his hostess rose suddenly without replying to this latest piece of stupidity, and leaning on the arm of Senator Fabio Guasco the other guests followed her, Flaminia Colonna on the arm of Emilio, Gianni Provana, Francesco Serlupi, and Mario Colonna in a group.

“However did it come into your head?” said Gianni Provana to Serlupi, keeping him back a little with Mario Colonna. “No one will ask you to dinner, my dear friend, if you start breaking the dishes in your host’s face at dessert.”

“You are right; I am a proper stupid,” Serlupi declared, as they crossed the two or three rooms before the drawing-room, “I shall go away at once; I can’t stop here.”

“Worse and worse,” observed Colonna; “stop a moment or two longer.”

“You are going away with Donna Flaminia, aren’t you?”

“Yes, we can’t possibly stay. We are going to Madame Takuhira’s last reception at the Japanese Legation.”

“Do me a charity and take me away with you,” begged Serlupi.

“Very well, very well,” said Colonna, laughing, “we will save you even to the last indiscretion.”

A circle was formed in the large drawing-room, all gathering in a corner of it where Maria had formed a little room from the larger with screens, large plants, and furniture, which cut off the space. However, the conversation proceeded languidly, the sort of coldness which had been there since the beginning of dinner had become accentuated after Francesco Serlupi’s escapade. It was the first dinner Emilio and Maria had given after her return home, thus resuming their old custom of giving, during the chief Roman season from December to the end of May, two dinners a week, one to intimates, another of ceremony, the traditional hospitality in Casa Guasco and high Roman society. It had been Flaminia Colonna who had urged her friend to resume the habits of life where they had been relaxed; it had been Flaminia, too, who had said affectionately to Emilio Guasco, with a sweet smile, “Give us a dinner like you used to.”

With a feeling of concealed timidity, Emilio had only dared to invite persons of whom he was sure; his uncle, Fabio Guasco, the Colonna couple, and finally that silly Francesco Serlupi, who was a gracious youth incapable of an incivility, but more capable of committing a disaster with a remark, the importance of which he did not understand till later, much later. Maria, as hostess, had endeavoured to give an air of continuity to this resumption of worldly life, decorating her dining-room as formerly, receiving her friends as formerly in that bright and flowery corner of the drawing-room, adorning her person with that studied elegance which distinguished her, and with which she satisfied her æsthetic tendencies, producing that impression of sympathy and fascination on her surroundings which was so appreciated. That evening she was dressed in black voile, affording a glimpse of neck and bosom, white in their perfect lines. A cluster of fresh red roses was placed at the opening, nestling on the whiteness of the skin, and rendering it more intense. A tall, stiff collar of small pearls in ten rows, with a clasp in front of rubies and diamonds, surrounded her neck; the bodice of the dress had half-sleeves embroidered with black wavy tulle, which did not reach to the elbow, and showed her magnificent white round arms with their delicate wrists. Her hands were loaded with rings, all in the ancient style, and in her hair, amidst its waves and dark abundance, were two little bright red roses. A quite interior exaltation had rendered more splendid her bright eyes, so often closed and disturbed. That evening she had experienced a sudden pride of energy and beauty.

But in spite of this a subtle sense of embarrassment and pain weighed on the dinner, and all the ordered luxury of the table, the exquisiteness of the viands, the richness of the surroundings, the serenity of the hostess, and the solicitous courtesy of the host had not caused this impression to be removed from the mind of their guests. This impression after Francesco Serlupi’s imprudent words became stronger; every one felt oppressed, and sought a decent and amiable excuse for leaving. Donna Maria allowed smoking in her room after dinner; but the men discreetly retired to a far corner, so, as they said, not to fumigate the two ladies. For some minutes Maria and Flaminia Colonna remained alone.

“What a bad experiment, eh, Flaminia, this dinner?” said Maria, with a sneer and a bitter smile.

“One wants much patience, immense patience,” replied the friend, shaking her expressive and gracious Roman head.

“Oh, not for me,” added Maria; “for myself I am ready to endure any pain. It displeases me on Emilio’s account.”

“He suffers, doesn’t he?” asked Flaminia, in a subdued voice.

“He suffers too much,” Maria assented sadly. Then she got up suddenly to serve the coffee and liqueurs, which had been placed before her. Her tall, undulating person possessed a great charm, as she lightly crossed the room, carrying a cup in her hands, while she offered it with a smile on her beautiful mouth to the men. She could see the admiration in all their eyes, and she seemed to see it mixed with confusion in her husband’s. She looked at him rather long, and between them, in those glances exchanged, it seemed as if a whole world of thoughts and sentiments had passed. With her rhythmical step Maria returned to her friend.

“Is it true what has been said?” she asked, sitting down.

“What?”

“That ... Marco and Vittoria already make a couple of doubtful happiness.”

“What does it matter to you?” replied Flaminia, looking at her with suspicion.

“It matters to me,” replied the other seriously; “I wished for their happiness.”

“But what do you desire?” said Flaminia a little diffidently.

“I desire with all my soul that they may be happy,” said Maria.

The friend believed her, because she recognised her as a creature incapable of lies or falseness.

“I believe that your desire of good for them cannot be a reality.”

“Do you know it then?”

“I know it.”

Maria sighed.

“Later on, with time,” concluded Donna Flaminia, with her sense of justice and equilibrium.

“One wants such patience, immense patience,” rejoined Maria Guasco dreamily.

The company began to break up. Flaminia and Mario Colonna had to go to the Japanese Legation. Francesco Serlupi, silently occupied with his flight, followed them, almost holding on to their shoulders, as if to hide himself. When the Senator Fabio Guasco took his leave as well, accustomed to early hours, he kissed his niece’s hand, bowing with much gallantry as he begged her not to forget her old uncle in her invitations. Emilio Guasco, who had not said a single word since dinner, announced that he was going to accompany him. So only Gianni Provana remained, immovable, always tranquil, with his monocle fixed in its orbit. Quietly and tactfully Maria made her way to her husband, and asked him in a low voice—

“Are you going out?”

“Yes,” he replied quietly.

“Why are you going?”

“To accompany uncle.”

“Are you returning soon?”

“I don’t know.”

“Take away Gianni Provana too,” she suggested.

“But why?” he asked, with a little irony; “I don’t want you to remain alone.”

“Take him away; take him away,” she murmured, troubled and nervously.

“Are you afraid of him?” the husband asked mockingly.

“No,” she replied proudly, “I am not afraid of any one.”

She turned her back on him, greeting and kissing her friend, giving her hand to the men to kiss, and to her husband as well. Did not his lips seem to linger a little longer on her hand?

Gianni Provana remained as usual, the quiet and tenacious man, who allows nothing to disturb the plan he has formed for his existence. Without glancing at him, Maria threw herself into her favourite arm-chair, took a book with uncut leaves from a table, looked for a paper-knife, and, having found it, with the peculiar noise of cut paper, occupied her beautiful hands.

“I don’t bore you, Donna Maria?”

“No,” she replied, without raising her head.

“You would have preferred me to go with the others?”

“Perhaps,” she replied absently.

“You can’t bear me, isn’t it so?” he asked.

“You are mistaken, Provana.”

“Am I very antipathetic to you?”

“You are not antipathetic to me.”

“At any rate I am not sympathetic?”

“Certainly not,” she replied.

“Then indifferent,” and he bit his lip.

“Exactly; indifferent,” she concluded in a monotonous voice.

He got up quickly.

“Are you going?” she asked, rather surprised.

“For what am I to remain here? To hear this from you? The worst you could have told me you have told.”

The face of the worldling and pleasure-lover expressed at that moment true suffering.

She looked at him.

“Why are you obstinate, Provana,” she asked coldly and courteously, “in bothering about me, of what I think, of what I say, of what I do?”

“Because I am a fool,” he confessed, taking his monocle out of its orbit and looking at her, a familiar trick of his.

“You are not a fool,” she replied, with a little smile; “you are eagerly anxious to get something that seems necessary to you, which would instead be useless and dangerous to you, and which, through your good fortune, you will never obtain.”

“Everything has been said,” he murmured, offering her his hand, “good-night, Donna Maria.”

“Good-night, Provana.”

She offered her hand. He took it and kissed it, holding it a little in his own. In spite of his worldly composure, in spite of his mask of good form, he showed that he was moved.

“Can’t you really manage, Donna Maria, to consider me a man worthy of some attention and curiosity?” he asked, with some anxiety.

“Oh, I know you well!” she replied, shaking her head.

“You could be wrong.”

“No, I can’t be wrong. For several years you have been attempting the conquest of my—attention—let us call it attention—a question of self-love. You have possessed other women more beautiful, more elegant than I. You are accustomed to succeed, so you are irritated and sad because you can’t with me. You have begun to suffer because you can’t succeed with me, and so you have got as far as believing that you are really in love.”

“Alas, it is no supposition!” he replied melancholily, but with an accent of truth.

“Let us not speak of love,” she declared; “I oughtn’t to listen any more to such talk. My greedy ears are satiated with it, they are tired of it, and have become deaf to it for ever and ever.”

“Nevertheless, some one loves you here, Donna Maria.”

“Whoever?”

“Emilio!”

“You are mistaken,” she said gravely; “Emilio no longer loves me.”

“Really?” he asked anxiously.

“Really.”

“Is he not an impassioned lover, an enamoured husband, and a tender friend?”

“None of these things, Provana.”

“What is he, then?”

“An enemy perhaps,” she replied softly.

“But hasn’t he pardoned you?”

“He has pardoned me, yes. He has pardoned me, but nothing more.”

“I never would have believed it,” he said thoughtfully.

“Nor I.”

“But perhaps,” he resumed, questioning her with his glance, “you have frightened him and kept him at a distance with your contempt.”

“I have done all that is possible; I am doing all that is possible,” she said vaguely, as if speaking to herself.

“You don’t love him; he will have understood.”

“I am humiliated and humiliate myself every day!” Maria exclaimed in a sorrowful voice; “and I break my pride every instant before him. But I can’t tell him to love me; neither does he ask it of me. He asks me nothing.”

“And if he were to ask it?” he said.

“He won’t; he won’t. He has understood I can’t lie.”

“Poor Emilio!” he exclaimed.

“Do you pity him? Even I pity him. He has had pity on me, and I return it to him. But beyond this he can do nothing for me, and I can do nothing for him.”

The conversation had suddenly become austere. The worldling appeared preoccupied, the woman with her beautiful hands crossed on her knees was telling her tale as if in a dream. Gianni Provana looked two or three times at her. She was so young still, so flourishing in beauty, with every womanly grace, and he said to her—

“Is it possible that Emilio has no eyes, no heart, no feelings, that he doesn’t experience near you that invincible attraction which has made me ridiculous for years?”

“Who knows! Who knows!” she exclaimed wearily.

“What, in fact, do you think about your life?”

“I think nothing, Provana. I live my life as I do as a duty neither pleasant nor sad. I was hoping, and still hope, to give consolation for the undeserving sorrow I have sown. Now I don’t seem to be walking towards my goal. I don’t seem to be moving.”

“And how if your heart is elsewhere?” he said harshly; “you still love Marco Fiore.”

“If I loved him still I shouldn’t have returned,” she rejoined immediately, firmly. “I often think of him with tenderness and sweetness, but without love.”

“Have you heard? He isn’t happy,” he continued tartly.

“The fault isn’t mine, nor is it his. It is impossible that either he or I could ever be happy again. We knew it when we separated.”

“But Vittoria, it seems, is unhappy!” exclaimed Provana.

“Ah, that is very, very sad,” she said thoughtfully.

“Like your husband, for that matter,” added Provana.

“It is all immensely sad,” she concluded bitterly.

“The fault is neither yours nor Marco’s,” said Provana, with a sneer.

“You can only smile or laugh at all this,” and she glanced at him with disdain.

“Better to smile or laugh, Donna Maria. I am an optimist in my cynicism. Everything will gradually and slowly settle down.”

“How?” she asked, not without anxiety.

“Vittoria and Marco will end by adapting themselves to each other. He will have a son—perhaps two or three—and she will not bother any more about her husband. Marco will be older, and a monotonous frequenter of the club, the races, and other noble pursuits. Perhaps he will have a mistress or two whom he will not love, since he who has loved cannot love another woman with passion.”

“And here?” she asked, with a mocking laugh.

“Here, too, time will do its work. Emilio’s pardon will be, shall we say—active. He will love you tranquilly and faithfully as formerly, and you will again be an exemplary couple. Remorse will have ceased to bite yours and Marco’s heart; you may yet be two beautiful great souls. The years will be passed, and the four of you will even be able to see each other tranquilly.”

A strident and sardonic laugh punctuated the discourse, while he replaced his monocle in its orbit elegantly.

“And you, Provana?” asked the woman, laughing, too, ironically.

“Oh, I!” he exclaimed, with false bonhommie; “I am the man who waits. Vice versâ in waiting will come old age and death. So I shall pass to my ancestors with a beautiful and ridiculous epitaph: that of having loved Donna Maria Guasco uselessly.”

“It is even a big something to be able to love,” she remarked thoughtfully.

“That is what they say in novels and dramas; in life it is rather boring. Above everything the man who loves alone is the greatest bore of all. Good-night, Donna Maria.”

“Good-night,” she said, without detaining him.

An uncertain, melancholy, bitter dream settled on Maria’s soul.

* * * * * * * *

A voice awoke her from this dream.

“Good-evening, Maria.”

“Good-evening, Emilio.”

Her husband had entered without her noticing his step. He sat on the seat which Provana had left. It seemed to Maria that his face had become grave and thoughtful. She put down her book, and leaned her head, as if it were too heavy for her, on her beautiful hands. In the harmony of her movements, her womanly grace and fascination, in the silence of the moment, had something penetrating about it.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

“Provana went away a minute ago.”

“I met him near here, but he didn’t see me. What fine tales has he been telling you?” he resumed, with a disingenuous accent.

“Nothing very fine,” she replied.

“However, you must have listened to him with interest.”

“What makes you think that?” she said, trembling.

“I suppose it. The conversation has not been short, nor have you cut it short,” he added a little bitterly.

“Ah!” she exclaimed; “ought I to show the door to your Provana?”

“Mine? Mine? Isn’t he your friend?” he interrupted with agitation.

“No,” she replied precisely, “he is not my friend.”

“He makes love to you, however,” observed Emilio.

The tone was intended to appear indifferent, but if Maria had listened carefully and had regarded her husband’s face better, she would have understood that it was a question, and asked with anxiety. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders, and let it go without a reply. He repeated it.

“He makes love to you, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, perhaps; I believe so,” she murmured, letting her reply fall indifferently.

“He has always made love to you, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, he seems to have always done so,” she replied, with the same indifference and distraction.

“And you?” he said, in a sharp, hard voice which hurt her. Was he really Emilio who was questioning her so haughtily like a judge? Up to then the conversation had seemed to Maria one of those usual monotonous conversations in which every one speaks and thinks quite differently to what he says, and the lips pronounce empty words mechanically. Instead, she was suddenly aware that her husband wished imperiously to know the truth of her heart.

“I?” she replied, at once becoming sad and proud.

“You, you,” he replied, without changing his tone.

“What do you want to know from me?”

“If Gianni Provana’s suit pleases you, if it has ever pleased you, if it will ever please you?” he said coldly and cuttingly, drawing near to her, and looking at her with eyes full of anger.

She stepped back a little, certainly not in fright, but to measure this new sentiment of Emilio’s.

“What does it matter to you?” she asked slowly.

“It matters to me,” he replied, without changing either his accent or the expression of his face.

“Gianni Provana’s suit has never pleased me, does not please me, and never will please me.”

She pronounced the words slowly, letting them fall one by one, fixing her husband with her eyes. She saw his face change distinctly, the anger vanish which had transfigured him, and she heard his voice assume a lower tone, veiled with unfamiliar emotion.

“Why?” he asked; “why?”

“Because I despise him,” she concluded honestly, retiring again into a definite silence, as if she had nothing else to say, or wished to say, on that subject.

“I beg your pardon, Maria,” he whispered, drawing near her, his voice saddened and a little disturbed.

She glanced at him.

“It doesn’t matter,” she replied.

“I am certain I have offended you,” he insisted, still troubled.

“Yes, a little, but it doesn’t matter,” she added, with some pride.

“I must have seemed a little bit brutal to you, Maria,” he exclaimed remorsefully.

“A little,” she replied less proudly; “but it doesn’t matter.”

“Does nothing matter to you, then?” he asked, exasperated and sad.

She was silent and lowered her eyes, playing with her rings in a way that Emilio remembered.

“Will you give me your hand in token of peace?” he asked, with a false accent of easiness and frivolity.

“Yes,” she replied, giving him her hand.

“You bear me no rancour, Maria?” he continued with the same studied disingenuousness.

“No.”

“So be it,” he said, and he kissed the hand, and afterwards tried to keep it in his. She did not raise her eyes to his, and remained immobile and silent.

“Otherwise,” he resumed, as if continuing a discourse, “I find it quite reasonable that Gianni Provana should press his suit on you. Don’t get angry again,” he said, pressing the hand which she tried to withdraw, “his name annoys you; I won’t pronounce it again. I say finally that he is right to press his suit on you.”

She listened to him silently.

“Why are you so seducing?” he exclaimed weakly.

Was it the deception of the light, or did a slight flush diffuse itself over his face? But why did she say nothing to the man who was drawing his face nearer to hers and speaking so softly? What thought was restraining her? What sentiment was conquering her? The man was still bending, as if to snatch her from her silence, to snatch a word from her, which would not issue from the tightly closed lips.

“You are not yet thirty, Maria?” he asked, with a sigh.

“I am twenty-eight,” she replied softly.

“And I am old now,” he murmured melancholily, pressing her still hand, “I am so old for you. Youth is a beautiful thing.”

“Youth is a magnificent thing,” she replied, raising her voice with flashing eyes.

The incantation was broken. Violently Emilio let go of her hand. Getting up and withdrawing apart he strode through the room two or three times gloomily, almost blindly striking against the furniture. Sadly she looked at him, seeing him a prey to a sudden access of fury, and before this mystery her woman’s heart quailed anxiously.

“Emilio!” she called two or three times without his hearing.

“Maria,” he replied at last, in a kind of growl, without stopping.

“What is the matter?”

“Nothing,” he replied, between his teeth.

Very gradually his violent perambulations amongst the furniture grew calmer. He stopped near a table at a little distance away and sat there. Leaning his elbows on it, he hid his head in his hands, immersed in deep and terrible thoughts. Thus the time passed, while Maria herself seemed wrapped in thought. At last she seemed to make a decision. She rose, crossed the room, and bending over her husband, without touching him, called him again: “Emilio.”

He only started, but said nothing.

“Emilio, my friend, reply,” she said softly and insinuatingly.

“What do you want?” was the gloomy reply.

“I want to know what is disturbing you.”

“Nothing is disturbing me.”

“Why do you lie? You are very troubled; tell me what is the matter?”

“You would laugh at me.”

“I have never laughed at any one,” she replied patiently.

“Who knows?” he said, looking at her in mad anger, and with the open intention of offending her.

She stopped, and grew pale. But her moral energy was too great.

“He who laughs at the sufferings of another is a knave and a fool; you would not consider me perverse or stupid, Emilio?”

“I am not suffering,” he replied gloomily, rising.

“You are mistaken, my friend. You want to deceive me or yourself. You have some ill in your soul; tell me what it is.”

“I have nothing, and I am not suffering,” he replied gloomily.

She shook her head sadly.

“Perhaps I could give you some consolation, Emilio?”

“No.”

“Every human being who has a feeling heart, and soul, can give comfort.”

“No.”

“Am I not your friend, Emilio? Have you no faith in your friend?”

He sneered horribly.

“Friend? friend? You my friend? You, you? I should have faith in you?”

His laughter caused her to shudder.

“How you must be suffering, Emilio, to speak thus,” she said pityingly, pressing her hands to her breast. The man’s heart at such words, and at such a manifestation of pity, melted. He fell again into his seat and a sigh escaped him.

“Oh, how I suffer!”

An immense compassion transfigured the woman. She bent over him and lightly touched his shoulders with her fingers. He trembled and raised his face, and fixed her with eyes so full of immense, measureless sorrow that he seemed to Maria like the living image itself of anguish.

“Tell me why you suffer, Emilio?” she demanded, with such emotion that his spasms seemed to increase.

“I can’t!” he said desperately.

“Whatever it is you can tell me; I can bear it. Speak, speak, Emilio; don’t be afraid of offending me; don’t be afraid of saddening me. Speak,” she said to him affectionately, at the height of her pity.

“I can’t, I can’t,” he said, in cold desperation.

“My friend, don’t be severe with yourself. Don’t be so implacable with your wounded heart; don’t maltreat your wounded soul. Be more humane, more tender, more compassionate with yourself, my friend, or those bleeding wounds will never close, and you will never feel them heal. You will then sigh away all your best blood, Emilio.”

“It is true,” he murmured, as if to himself.

“Friend, conquer your pride and your amour propre. All of us, all of us, no one is excluded, have suffered, are suffering, and will suffer. It is not a shame or a reproach to suffer. Those who hide their pain proudly are not men, are not Christians, and do not feel the human comfort of weeping.”

“That is true,” he murmured.

“Friend, I know the words that caress sorrow, that rock it and finally send it to sleep. Later on, when it awakes in us, it is more tender and weaker; it is a much duller torment.”

Like a suffering child, he looked at her anxiously.

“My friend, why do you suffer?” she asked, leaning over him with a face transfigured with the grandeur of her loving charity, taking his hand and caressing it like that of a sick child in pain. “You oughtn’t to suffer. You have been an upright and just man. Your life has no remorses; it was guided by a moral conscience, tranquil and firm. You have not sinned—that I know; you have caused sorrow to none. Yours is a life without remorse, and so beautiful that suffering ought not to touch it.”

He looked at her ardently, almost drinking in her words like some divine liquor.

“You ought not to suffer. You are no longer alone in life; your friend is near you, near your heart, desiring one thing only, that you may not suffer, that you may no longer feel lonely, that you may possess a soul near you and for you——”

He looked at her passionately, and every one of her words seemed to intoxicate him. She, too, seemed exhilarated with compassion, tenderness, and devotion.

“Emilio, it is your Maria who is here,” she said solemnly.

Then like a madman he took her in his arms, pressed her madly to his breast in a frenzied embrace, and kissed her long, while she, trembling and lost, closed her eyes as before a mortal peril. But immediately, as if the contact of her person had scorched him, as if the lips which had not given him a kiss had scorched him, he pushed Maria brutally aside, crying out at her—

“You cause me horror!”

“Emilio!” she exclaimed, in complete amazement.

“Go away, go away. You cause me horror!” he yelled in her face like a madman.

She drew back, stupefied and terrified.

“You have pardoned me!” she exclaimed.

“It is true, it is true,” he yelled, “but I can’t forget. Go away, go away; I can’t forget.”

So she went, bent, defeated, and broken by the incomparable weight of the truth.

XIII

In one of the large reception-rooms of Casa Nerola, near a bank formed of an enormous group of Hortense roses, two young girls stand talking and smiling discreetly, slowly moving their little white fans. The one, Theresa Santacroce, is dressed in light blue, with a silver belt, her hair arranged high with a circlet of silver ivy leaves. The other, Stefania Farnese, is dressed in ivory silk, and two large red roses in her chestnut hair give her a Spanish appearance, although her beauty is delicate.

“We thought we were going to be late with mamma.”

“Oh, we dined at seven on purpose.”

“That is why you haven’t been to the tea-room?”

“Of course. Here it is the same as at Court, one has to come before the sovereigns arrive.”

“The most beautiful spectacle is, naturally, the entry of the Emperor.”

“Is it true that all the women are in love with him?”

“So they say. As for me I don’t like Germans.”

“O Stefania, let us be grateful to him. If he hadn’t come to Rome in December we shouldn’t have had the first ball now.”

“Long live the Kaiser, then! Since without him we should have had to wait till the end of February.”

“You are expecting Giovanni Altieri, aren’t you, Stefania?”

“Giovanni Altieri! I don’t want to hear him mentioned. No one is more voluble or frivolous.”

“Really!”

“Certainly. Just think, he has been in love this summer three or four times with foreigners—American, Russian, English. And now the wretch does nothing but speak badly of Italian girls.”

“How all our sweethearts take away these foreign women!”

“Let us give them an exchange. Let us go abroad with our mammas and marry Russian princes, English dukes and American millionaires.”

“A good idea; but our Italians are so sympathetic. Look at Marco Fiore over there; what a handsome youth! I would have married him very gladly.”

“And you would have done very badly.”

“Why?”

“Why ... do you know nothing? you are too simple.”

“Tell me why; tell me.”

“Another time. How late it is, and the ball can’t be opened till the Emperor comes!”

“Shall we see a state quadrille danced?”

“They say he dances beautifully.”

“Will he dance with the Principessa di Nerola?”

“Naturally. You know she is German, and a mediatised princess. That is why she is giving the ball and the Emperor is coming.”

“Are you engaged for the first waltz?”

“Yes, with De Goertz, of the Austrian Embassy.”

“Have you begun, then, with the foreigners?”

“Certainly; and you?”

“Oh, I am dancing with my cousin Roffredo.”

* * * * * * * *

Two old ladies are seated on a sofa of antique brocade in another of the rooms. Their age prohibits them from dancing. Their hair is white, their faces are furrowed with wrinkles, and their bodies bent with senility, so they seldom leave their patriarchal homes except on occasions of great state. They are the Princess of Anticoli and the Duchess of Sutri. Both are dressed in sumptuous dresses, trimmed with valuable lace; the most precious family jewels adorn their white hairs, giving them a certain majesty. Their necks, thin with age, wear scintillating diamond necklaces, and emeralds of old-fashioned style.

The Duchess of Sutri has magnificent eyes, black and vivid, which form a singular contrast to the old age depicted in her face and person. Both their fans are closed in their hands, now so tired of moving them after so many years of balls and festivities. They are talking together slowly, watching with wandering eyes the elegant crowd which is coming and going.

“It wanted an Emperor, Lavinia, to make me leave my home at night.”

“Oh, in other times I wouldn’t have come here at any cost; isn’t he a Lutheran? But all that is changed. My Fabrizio has absolutely stated his wish to enter the Italian army. How was I, a widow, to contradict him? You understand me.”

“You have done well, my poor Lavinia. In fact, perhaps our sons and nephews are more right to accustom themselves to the new state of things than we are to protest. Now I am tired and sorry even of the discussion. I look and smile; sometimes I even laugh.”

“As for me, on the other hand, so many things happen and cause my pity, Livia. But to whom am I to say it? I should offend people by remarking on certain misfortunes and losses.”

“What magnificence, do you remember, in our times?”

“We were all much richer then, Livia.”

“What a lot of us have fallen into the most terrible poverty; it is a real shame.”

“Giovanna della Marsiliana.”

“Poor, poor thing! She lives on her little property near Perugia, just a small house and a garden, I think.”

“Does she stay there summer and winter?”

“Always now.”

“It is a real exile then.”

“But her daughter-in-law, Carolina della Marsiliana, is here. I see her over there.”

“Look, look, she is wearing the Marsiliana pearls!”

“Yes, she has rescued them from the moneylender, Labanchi, for a large sum.”

“Naturally, her father has so many millions.”

“A wholesale boot-manufacturer!”

“Yes, it seems he wants to repurchase the whole of the Marsiliana properties.”

“Carolina is speaking with Arduina Fiore.”

“Why isn’t Arduina wearing her diadem or necklace?”

“She has given them to her two daughters-in-law, Beatrice and Vittoria.”

“They are fortunate, those Casalta girls.”

“Do you think so? This evening they are wearing the jewels of Casa Fiore. Do you notice the two daughters-in-law are following their mother-in-law side by side?”

“Beatrice is very charming.”

“The other is insignificant.”

“A little pale and supercilious. She doesn’t like society, I suppose. How long are you staying, Lavinia?”

“Don’t you know we can’t go away till this Emperor leaves?”

“I knew his grandfather very well at Berlin.”

“And I his father in London, when he came to fetch his bride, Victoria.”

“It is useless to remind him of that.”

“Oh dear, yes.”

Two gentlemen have withdrawn from the flow of people to an embrasure of a window. One is Carlo Savelli, of the great house of Savelli, tall, strong and nervous, looking as if he had dismounted from one of the well-limbed horses of the Campagna, and had changed his large round cow-boy cloak for the evening dress of society. The other is Guglielmo Morici, pale and delicate, of the best Roman bourgeoisie, but allied by business and relationship to the nobility. In the conversation of each the Roman accent is very marked.

“When is the meeting fixed for?”

“For Saturday evening, Guglielmo. You are going to take part if you can get off?”

“Yes, I can get off for two or three days, for the Monday or even till Tuesday morning.”

“Good; we must pray Heaven that it doesn’t rain!”

“I don’t mind a little rain when one is out shooting, a little, but not too much.”

“You are right. We train to Velletri, thence we drive for three hours to Campiglione.”

“Do we get there at midnight?”

“Yes, and go to bed at once. At six o’clock we are off. Breakfast is at a place called L’Æqua Morta, and at night we sleep at Fattino.”

“How I love these shooting trips, dear Carlo! For three days through fields and woods, eating here and there, sleeping here and there. One could believe oneself far away in Africa or Asia.”

“I swear to you, Guglielmo, that everything else is indifferent to me; I rave about the chase. At first it was a hobby, but now it is a passion.”

“Oh, I have had it since a boy.”

“People who do not understand it laugh at us.”

“Let them laugh. Who is coming with us?”

“The usual lot; Mario Colonna, Giovanni Santacroce, and Emilio Guasco.”

“Splendid; have you fixed up everything?”

“This evening we must all meet here to arrange the time-table.”

“Is Emilio coming here too this evening?”

“I believe he is coming with his wife.”

“A beautiful woman!”

“I have always liked her.”

“You are not the only one who has liked her.”

“What are we to do? It is a misfortune for us husbands.”

“However, they are together again now—man and wife!”

“Oh, Emilio is a splendid fellow.”

“I wouldn’t have done it.”

“So one says. But then one has to find oneself in certain predicaments. Watch if you can see them arriving.”

“I see him; Mario Colonna is there.”

“Beckon to him to look for us after the Emperor has entered.”

“He has winked ‘yes.’ Now I see Emilio Guasco.”

“Is he with his wife?”

“Yes, yes. She is more beautiful than ever this evening. Do you know that even I think in looking at her that he was right to have pardoned her.”

“Have you nodded to him?”

“Yes; but I suppose he hasn’t seen me.”

“We will find him as soon as the Emperor has passed. At that moment every one will flock into the ball-room.”

“Is there to be much dancing afterwards?”

“Certainly, on account of the festivities the ladies have been enthusiastic about the Kaiser. My daughter, Maria, will stop late.”

“I think my wife must be very late. She was still dressing when I went out.”

“Oh, these ladies and their toilette!”

“Oh, I leave mine every liberty of being late by setting out first. Thus there is no quarrelling.”

A telephone message from the German Embassy has warned the Principe di Nerola that the Emperor of Germany with his suite has started for the Palazzo di Nerola. It is half-past ten. Court ceremonial ordains that the host honoured by a royal visit, receives His Majesty in the courtyard of his palace, at the foot of the grand staircase. The December evening is very cold. A slight frost covers the roads. The Prince of Nerola is already seventy, and the waiting in the cutting night air worries him secretly, in spite of the high honour which is coming to him from the Imperial visit.

The Roman patrician descends the stairs of his majestic palace wrapped in a fur coat, with his hat on his head. His three sons, Don Marcontonio, Don Camillo, and Don Clemente follow him at a little distance. On every step of the staircase, on right and left, are valets of Casa Nerola in grand livery. At the foot of the staircase footmen, with large lighted candelabra, form a circle round the group formed by the Prince and his sons.

The Nerola palace, in the via Santi Apostoli, is imposing and solemn in its exterior architecture. The courtyard is immense, with a fountain in the middle with a green tiled circle round it. A portico opens on the four sides of the courtyard. The internal architecture resembles the Palazzo Borghese.

Paolo, fifteenth Prince of Nerola, is tall and thin, with flowing white beard. His sons, between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age, all resemble him, but their appearance is less aristocratic and proud than his. Some minutes pass in silence, and suddenly the janitor of Casa Nerola, a Colossus clothed in a livery resplendent with gold, strikes the asphalt three times with his great gold-headed baton, while a dull noise of carriage-wheels reaches from the street.

At once, with youthful agility, Don Paolo frees himself from his cape, and remains in evening dress, his breast covered with decorations. The first imperial carriage enters, containing the aides-de-camp, and stops in front of the grand staircase. The imperial master of ceremonies and three officials in German uniform descend. Salutes are exchanged, and all four group themselves behind the Prince, in waiting. The second carriage enters more slowly, the Prince advances to the door. The Emperor alights, and uncovers at once before the Roman patrician, who bows profoundly and thanks His Imperial Majesty for the honour he is doing to Casa Nerola. The Emperor smiles beneath his light moustaches, curled up proudly, and the procession is formed.

The footmen go slowly in front, holding the magnificent silver candelabra, lit with sweet-scented candles. Behind, at a certain distance, the Emperor. On his left the Prince walks a little apart, and a little behind him a group is formed by the Prince’s sons and the imperial suite. The procession mounts the stairs almost in silence, and with great solemnity. The sovereign is very calm, and talks to his host in German, looking around at the noble beauty of the house he is entering. Above, in the last ante-room, at the entrance to the suite of reception-rooms, the Princess of Nerola is waiting, born Princess Tekla di Salm-Salm. Dressed in white brocade, she wears the closed crown of a mediatised German princess; on her bodice is pinned a German order, which is only given to German ladies of high lineage. Her hair, which had been of the palest flaxen colour, is now quite white. She has that opaque whiteness of colouring, and the rosy cheeks of the descendants of Arminius. Though massive and big-boned, she looks quite the great lady. Immediately her Emperor appears at the door she goes towards him, and almost prostrates herself in profound reverence. Calmly, and almost jokingly, the Emperor takes her hand, kisses it gallantly, and gives her at once her title: “Your Serene Highness.”

The orchestra in the ante-room at once broke into the German National Anthem, in which all the ardent and mysterious power of the German soul is manifested. The procession is again formed, and William, King and Emperor, tall and erect in his uniform of a colonel of the Garde du Corps, gives his arm to the Princess to cross the rooms, glittering with light and magnificently decorated with plants and flowers, showing in all their refulgence the ancient beauty of their sculptural and pictorial decoration, in all the richness of their artistic furniture, an historic luxury, so calm and powerful. Behind the Emperor and the Princess come the Prince, his sons, and the suite. All walk slowly, regulating their step to his. He goes slowly, for he knows the secret of these appearances, and speaks smilingly to the Princess, looking around to right and left at the two lines of men and women who bow profoundly to him, and lower their eyes, if he fixes them with his clear, flashing eyes. It is a double hedge of women especially, in coloured and brilliant gowns, in white and soft gowns, with bare shoulders and arms. It is a double hedge of heads—blondes, brunettes, chestnuts, golden, white—on which feathers flap, on which jewelled stars and shining crescents tremble, on which strange flowers almost open: heads bowed beneath the weight of their thickly dressed hair, little heads almost childish beneath the wavy aureole of golden locks, heads which bow in a salute of reverence, of admiration, of mute feminine sympathy, for this Emperor of legend, of poesy, of ever-renewing self-will. He admires and greets the women with a slightly haughty smile, continuing his way. There is not a word or a whisper as he passes, nothing except the rustling of silk and velvet, or the jingling of the sabres of the suite. In this silence the passing of the Emperor-King acquires a more impressive and imposing character.

Crowded one against the other, dame and damsel had not spoken while he appeared and while he was passing, and indifferent to their surroundings had only thought of seeing him and being seen, of greeting him and receiving his greeting. Mixed among them are old men and young, also intent on bowing to the sovereign. In the famous tapestry-room of Casa Nerola, the room before the ball-room, in the great space cleared in the middle of it to allow the Emperor-King to pass, opposite but far off, divided by the big space and many people, a man and a woman have recognised each other with their eyes, and have remained immobile and silent to gaze at each other.

They are Maria Guasco Simonetti and Marco Fiore.

Since that sad autumn afternoon a year ago, when they had wept their last tears together without either being able to console the other, taking leave of each other for ever, and burying their dead dream of love, they had never seen each other. It is a year ago since, courageously and with broken hearts, they had separated, thinking in that terrible moment that they would never see each other again till death or old age; but so many singular circumstances had happened around them during this time, the change of events has been great, and their fate has changed all its course and aspect. Suddenly and unexpectedly on that December evening, amidst sumptuous and splendid surroundings, amidst flowers, women, jewels, music, and perfumes, the two who had lived their passion of love together, and had placed it desolately in its sepulchre, are face to face, divided by the crowd; but their glances, greedily and intensely attracted, seem as if they never could separate. For a long moment Maria Guasco and Marco Fiore gaze at each other. In their eyes there is only one beautiful, simple, strong expression, sadness free from every ardour, sadness free of every desire; sadness without remorse or hope; a sadness which neither invokes nor offers help. It is an incomparable and immeasurable sadness, which can only be supported by lofty human strength in its humility and innocence. Thus they look at each other and are only sad for that which was and is no more, for that which can never return to them, since nothing which is dead in the soul rises again.

Proud and smiling the Emperor passes, and a flock of people crowd behind the suite and increases near the door, to get near him and surround him. Marco and Maria are separated by the great crowd. But they do not seek each other. Everything has been said in one long glance, in one long moment of intimate understanding.

XIV

As Emilio Guasco helped his wife into her opera-cloak, she felt on her bare shoulders the sensation of something scorching. It was her husband’s hands that had touched her. She turned round quickly, never having seen him so pale. They were alone in the armoury of Casa Nerola, used as a cloak-room. No one is leaving, no one ought to be leaving at the moment when the festival is at its brightest, since the Emperor is dancing in the state quadrille. But Emilio had said to her, coming up unexpectedly, in a decided voice—

“Let us go.”

She obeyed at once. Two valets hastened to help her, but Emilio took the cloak and shawl. How hot the man’s hands felt on the woman’s cold white shoulders. Descending the staircase, with a silent bow he offered his arm to his wife, and, almost as if he feared to see her fall, he pressed hers against his as in a vice. They said not a word, nor did they look at each other. At the bottom of the stairs they waited while the porter called their carriage.

Slightly bending her beautiful head Maria entered the coupé drawn by a pair of grey horses, and the door closed behind Emilio with a dull sound. Emilio sat silently in his corner. Twice his wife looked at him in the half-light, and noticed that he was paler than she had ever seen him; his troubled eyes were brightly fixed on her.

She lowered her head. Suddenly he sought her gloved hand in the large velvet and lace sleeve of her mantle, and pressed it so hard that she gave a cry of pain.

“Emilio, you are hurting me!”

He threw the hand aside brutally and laughed loudly. They had reached Casa Guasco. She mounted the stairs rapidly, a prey to a singular trouble caused by an unknown fear, of an unknown shame and sorrow. She did not turn round, but she heard her husband following through the different rooms to the boudoir which preceded her own room, the room whose threshold Emilio had never crossed since she had returned home. In that little room they usually said good-night before separating. She stopped, turned round, and offered her hand to her husband.

“Good-night,” she said, in a feeble voice.

He did not reply, but looked at her strangely, and preceded her into the bedroom. At the threshold before entering she hesitated, and a feminine trembling caused her to vacillate. However, her pride and her courage came to her aid as she entered the room. The man and the woman stood near to each other, looking into each other’s eyes.

“Good-night, Emilio,” she said firmly.

“I want to speak to you,” he managed to say with difficulty, in a hoarse voice.

“Very good,” she replied firmly.

She allowed the shawl, mantle, gloves, and purse to be taken away by Chiara’s deft fingers, who was in the room in attendance on her, almost feeling the gloomy hour which was waiting for them. All these operations are done calmly and dexterously. Quietly Maria removed from her head the grand diadem of diamonds, the pearl collar and necklace, the bracelets from her arms, and poured them into Chiara’s hands, saying quietly—

“You may go.”

“Am I to wait?” whispered the faithful creature, with a timid glance.

“No,” exclaimed Emilio suddenly.

“No,” replied Maria quietly.

With a light step Chiara disappeared. Maria sat down in an arm-chair in her white ball dress, and waited patiently. Her husband stood before her in evening dress, with a flower in his buttonhole, but like a corpse in the face, except that his eyes were shining with an evil flame.

“Maria,” he broke out, “have you decided to make me commit a crime?”

For half-an-hour she had understood that a breath of madness was crossing her husband’s senses, and she believed and hoped she could conquer this madness by calmness and coldness.

“I don’t understand you; will you explain?” she asked in a harmonious voice.

“Don’t lie!” he cried, “don’t lie, as you always do! You know quite well what I am saying. You pretend and dissimulate. You lie, that’s it; and I shall kill some one to make you content.”

“Emilio, Emilio,” she murmured sweetly, “you are wronging me; but I can stand the wrong since I see you are very excited. Calm yourself, I beg of you. Make an effort over your impetuousness; conquer yourself and be tranquil.”

He replied with a horrible laugh.

“Make an end of it, Maria, make an end of this nauseating cataplasm of your pity! Your compassion exasperates me. Go and use it in some hospital. I am sure you understand; and I am going to kill some one. I am going to kill him.”

She shook her head. Her sweetness disappeared with his laughter, and she became thoughtful and sad. He had risen, and was walking up and down the room like a madman talking to himself.

“It shall not be allowed for a miserable woman, yes, for a miserable woman, without honour and without heart, to make a poor gentleman unhappy and ridiculous. An honourable man should not allow her.”

“Are you speaking of me?” she asked, getting up at once proud and erect before him, and forcing him to stop his mad perambulations.

“Exactly; I am speaking of you, dishonour of my life, misfortune of my life!” Emilio cried in her face.

She bent a little under the new injury, but still gathered all her strength not to retaliate or rebel, to dominate her pride, and to use only her goodness and her tenderness.

“Emilio, Emilio, you are raving!” she exclaimed, with immense sadness.

Again he burst into a harsh laugh, false and stridulous.

“So I am a madman, am I? And what are you, Maria? You who lost your head for three years for that waxen-faced doll, for that languishing idiot, for that perverse and mischievous-souled Marco Fiore? Oh yes, call me mad—you, you, who had neither shame nor honour for three years? You who are a spectacle for the laughter and contempt of the whole of Rome for your madness; and dare you tell me that I am raving?”

“Oh, Emilio, Emilio!” she exclaimed, trembling.

“Do you deny it? Do you deny it?” he yelled, almost stammering, so great was his fury.

She looked at her husband. The great danger she was in only made her a little paler and her lips a little drier. She kept silent.

“Haven’t you loved him?” he yelled, coming nearer to her, taking her two hands and squeezing them as in a vice.

She closed her eyes, as if face to face with death. Then she opened them wide, and replied simply—

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you run away from home for him, with him?”

She tried to free her hands, which were closed in his, but he did not let go. Again with simplicity, with loyalty, she had the courage to reply to the furious man—

“Yes.”

“There! there! Didn’t you adore him for three years?”

She tightened her lips, and bit them to conquer the pain of her tortured hands, and without a cry still replied—

“Yes.”

“And you still love him; you’ll always love him!” he cried, and in his anger this time there was mixed deep suffering.

He let go her hands. She fell back exhausted, but replied in a clear, precise voice—

“I do not love him.”

“It is false, it is false; you still love him.”

“If we had still loved each other we should not have left each other,” she declared without hesitation.

“When you returned to this house to laugh at me, to make a fool of your tortured husband, you were in love with Marco Fiore, and Marco Fiore was in love with you.”

“I should not have placed a foot in your house, understand, if I had still loved Marco,” she proclaimed, proudly and coldly.

“Cursed be that evening! Cursed be that hour!” the man exclaimed, mad with jealousy and suffering.

“You called me here,” she stated.

“If not, wouldn’t you have come? Wouldn’t you have come, eh, woman without soul or heart?”

“I should never have come,” she declared.

“You are a monster of pride and aridness!” he cried; but in his voice sorrow conquered anger.

“I have tamed my pride before you, Emilio, don’t forget it,” she replied.

“When? How? You humiliate yourself? You?”

“When I accepted the pardon you offered me. I could have refused it, but I conquered my pride. I bowed and almost prostrated myself before you, and you pardoned me. Remember that; remember that.”

“Cursed be those words; cursed the lips that pronounced them.”

Maria stretched out her hand involuntarily, as if to stop her husband from a mortal fall.

“Weren’t you sincere at that moment?” she asked in a dull voice.

“I was sincere,” he replied, with a gulp.

“Did that pardon come from the bottom of your heart?”

“From the bottom, from the very depths of my heart.”

“Why do you then curse that moment, those words and that sentiment?”

“Because you still love Marco Fiore.”

“No,” she replied.

“You keep his letters.”

“That is true; but I don’t love him. His letters are sacred, like those of one dead, like those of one dear to me.”

“You love him; you love him!” exclaimed Emilio, in a monotony of desperation; “you keep every gift of his.”

“I don’t love him; but what I have is dear to me as a funereal memory.”

“You love him, and he loves you. The house at Santa Maria Maggiore has remained as it was. It belongs to him and you.”

“But I have never been there again,” she replied disdainfully.

“I know, I know. I know where you go. But you will go there to-morrow perhaps, and he will come to-morrow. Oh, this evening, if I had never seen this evening!”

He turned, wringing his hands under a pain he could no longer resist.

“I saw your eyes, Maria; I saw his when you met at Casa Nerola. I saw all. And Vittoria Fiore, the poor unfortunate, saw you. She was as pale as death. This time, understand, I can’t endure the insult; I shall kill you and him. But endure this shame again—never, never!”

She made a supreme effort of courage, subduing her indignation, repressing it at the back of her atrociously offended mind. She remembered that she had returned home to be good, to be sweet, to restore peace and serenity there, to give back happiness to her husband, who had a right to it, to perform works of tenderness, even to the silence and death of her own heart.

“Emilio, Emilio,” she said softly, “tell me what I am to do to soften your mind and pacify your heart. You don’t believe me to-day, you must to-morrow. Tell me all. Shall we leave Rome together for ever?”

“No,” he replied gloomily; “I should think that you wanted to fly from Marco Fiore.”

“Shall we go for a long voyage together?”

“No; you have been everywhere together, that I know.”

“Do you want me to shut myself up at home, to see no one, as if I were dead?”

“No; I should think you were absorbed in memories of him.”

“Well, would you like us to lead a society life together, wild and full of pleasure?”

“No, no. We should meet him every day, every evening, and I should commit a crime, Maria,” and the fixed idea returned to him.

She felt lost for a moment.

“Then what am I to do?”

“There is one only means,” he replied, drawing much nearer to her, speaking with his hot breath in her face.

“What is it?”

“To love me as you loved him.”

The woman frowned two or three times without replying.

“I want to be loved passionately by you, do you understand? You must love me with passion as you loved Marco, as I love you. Have you understood? No more of this pale and flaccid affection, this loving friendship, which I despise and which exasperates me to frenzy. It must be passion. Have you perfectly understood me?”

She stood cold and rigid with staring eyes; but made no reply.

“You want to love me, don’t you? I am your husband, who spoke the first words of love to you, who gave you the first kiss. Remember, remember, you who want to love me. You must love me as I have loved you. Speak; reply.”

She closed her eyes, and replied in a choking and desperate voice—

“I will try; I will try.”

“When?” and the question is like a dull roar.

“Later on, later on,” she said, feeling herself lost, but unable to lie.

“No, no,” he roared. “No, this evening, this very evening, in which you have seen him again, in which you have looked at and understood each other.”

* * * * * * * *

It is late in the night, Maria is alone, stretched in her easy-chair, with dishevelled hair, which covers her face. Her hands hang limply with fingers apart, and her eyes are wide open, almost deprived of their glance. With a supreme effort of will she raised her hand and touched the bell. Her head fell back exhausted. The silence around was intense. No one came, and she had no strength left. But a little step draws near, a familiar face bends over her.

“I am dying,” she cries to the faithful girl.

Chiara suddenly becomes strong, lifts her in her arms, holds her up, and begins to take off her ball dress, while Maria every moment seems to be fainting.

“I am dying,” she repeats.

At last she is free of her gay garments, and the faithful girl tries to make her rise, with infinite patience and tact. At last she stands up, tall, rigid and pale as a ghost.

“I am dying!” she cries.

She grips Chiara with her hands for aid, totters, sways, and falls exhausted in the gloom and silence, as if dead.

XV

Donna Arduina stopped in the centre of the large hall of Palazzo Fiore, with its dark carved wood, and red tapestry bearing the Fiore arms. In spite of her years and life’s troubles she still preserved her noble appearance. Marco bent and kissed her hand tenderly, while she kissed him on the forehead affectionately.

“Good-night, Marco.”

“Good-night, mamma.”

Vittoria had stopped two or three paces behind, wrapped in a white mantle, trimmed with gold, the large chinchilla collar of which suited the delicacy of her face and slender figure. She had placed no shawl on her hair, whose wavy gold was almost oppressed by the weight of the diadem, which shone brightly in the gloom of the hall. Her white and tranquil face is without expression, and her eyes have a distant and dull glance. In her hands she held her shawl, and waited patiently.

“Good-night, Vittoria,” said Donna Arduina, approaching her daughter-in-law.

“Good-night, mother,” she replied, stooping to kiss her hand. Then she drew herself up naturally and avoided the kiss on her forehead which Donna Arduina intended to give her.

Donna Arduina hesitated a moment as if she wished to say something, then, turning her back, she walked slowly and imposingly towards her own apartments. Marco had already started towards his, and his wife followed him without saying a word. As they crossed the various rooms, Marco looked two or three times at Vittoria as if he wished to question her silent, reserved face. She appeared, however, not to notice his questioning glance. Thus they reached their immense bedroom, the room occupied by the eldest sons of Casa Fiore and their wives for more than three hundred years, which modern taste and modern furniture had changed very little, leaving the solemnity and austerity of the old Roman patrician houses. In the majesty of her surroundings, the fragile woman seemed but a fantastic shadow. She sat down, but did not take off her cloak, opening it a little as if she felt warm.

“Aren’t you going to call your maid?” Marco asked, taking the gardenia out of his buttonhole, as if about to undress.

“No,” she replied, “a little later. I must say something to you, Marco.”

He raised his eyebrows slightly, and jokingly sought to change the tone of the conversation.

“We will talk in bed if you like, dear. It is an excellent place for conversation, and I will listen to you with deep attention without going to sleep.”

“No,” she replied dryly, “we must talk as we are.”

“As we are, dressed for society! As we were in Casa Nerola? Very well, dear, but I find the Emperor is missing. We can telephone to him, if you like, to assist at this colloquy?”

And he laughed mischievously. However, Vittoria paid no attention.

“I want to make a request of you, Marco.”

“What is it?”

“I want ten days’ freedom.”

“You, Vittoria?”

“I, yes.”

“To do what?”

“I want to make a retreat at Bambino Gesù now that Christmas is drawing near,” she concluded, in a low voice.

“A novena!” he exclaimed, internally relieved, but not showing it; “and what prevents you from doing it here?”

“It is impossible, Marco. It isn’t a question of prayer only. One must retire for nine whole days to a convent.”

“To a convent? Are you going to become a nun like Ophelia?”

“Why Ophelia? What do you mean?”

“Nothing, nothing. Go then to your convent; which one?”

“That of the white nuns of Gesù Bambino in via Merulana.”

“Who put such a strange idea into your head, Vittoria? Doesn’t it seem a little ridiculous to you?”

“It is neither ridiculous nor strange,” she added, shaking her head; “other ladies go there to retire and pray.”

“Old ladies, I suppose?”

“No,” she insisted coldly; “young ladies, and beautiful too; young married women especially.”

“Who are perhaps in mortal sin. Are you in mortal sin, though I didn’t know it, Vittoria?” he laughed loudly, looking at her.

“I hope not,” she replied, lowering her eyes to hide a sudden flash; “but so many people can be in mortal sin, prayers are necessary for us and them.”

“Even for me, dear nun!” he exclaimed mischievously.

“For you also,” she replied expressionlessly.

“When must you enter?”

“To-morrow evening at eight. To-morrow is the fifteenth of December.”

“When do you come out?”

“On the evening of the twenty-fourth.”

“Have you told mamma this?”

“No; please tell her yourself to-morrow.”

“Perhaps mamma will not approve.”

“She knows what it is a question of,” murmured Vittoria; “all Roman ladies know of this retreat in the monastery of Gesù Bambino. Get her to tell you.”

She blushed slightly. He looked at her, and proceeded more gently with the conversation.

“Are there special prayers in this convent, Vittoria? Are special graces asked for?”

“One grace only,” she replied, with downcast eyes; “one grace only of the Divine Son, Marco.”

“Ah!” he replied without further remark, understanding.

“Do you so very much want to have a son, Vittoria?” he asked in a peculiar tone.

There was a deep silence between them.

“I desire it ardently,” she broke out suddenly, with an impetuous accent, immediately recovering herself, “I desire nothing else now.”

“Also I want one for you,” he said, vaguely and absently.

“Not for yourself?” was the sharp question. But he did not heed the intense expression.

“As for myself, you understand, my brother Giulio has three sons. The house of Fiore has descendants.”

“Beatrice has been fortunate,” she murmured, with a sigh.

“There, there; you, too, will be fortunate,” he resumed jokingly and laughingly; “you will have a quiverful of sons, too many, I tell you, dear Vittoria, for many sons will give you much worry. Don’t doubt; you are not sterile.”

“Who knows,” she said, with a sorrowful shudder.

“Go to your convent, dear, since you are set on it,” he said, laughing; “the Bambino Gesù will content you, and when you return home He will send you the little one.”

He drew near her to kiss and embrace her. With a cold gesture she repulsed him.

“Hoighty, toighty! Hoighty toighty!” he exclaimed; “why all this rudeness to your lawful husband, Don Marco Fiore?” He tried again to draw her to himself and kiss her. Again still more coldly and hostilely she kept him at a distance.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“We must live from to-day in prayer and mortification,” she replied in glacial tones.

“Therefore?” he asked.

“You resume from to-night your bachelor bedroom.”

“Ah; and am I to keep it for ten days?” he said drily.

“Yes, for ten days, till my return.”

“Brava! Brava! And if I am bored in there all alone?” he continued, with signs of annoyance.

“Oh, you won’t bore yourself there!” she replied, with a slightly bitter smile.

He remembered that in that room everything had remained untouched since he had married, that it was full of portraits, big and small, of Maria Guasco, with recollections of their dead dream, their dead love. He understood more than ever the depth of his wife’s thoughts and feelings; he realised her intense pain. So he tried again in pity and tenderness to make her speak, to make her weep.

“Vittoria, Vittoria!” he exclaimed in sad reproach, “you as usual are dissimulating and lying, and that makes you suffer and becomes unfair to me. I don’t want to be angry, and you should not suffer.”

“You are mistaken,” she replied coldly, “neither do I suffer nor need you be angry. My confessor has told me that the scope of matrimony is not love but children, that one must ask Heaven for children, and pray very much. I am going to pray.”

“Ah!” he said, suddenly becoming cold, “you are convinced that the scope of matrimony is not love?”

“Quite convinced,” she answered harshly.

“All the worse,” he exclaimed in a bad temper; “all the worse; and when did you decide to enter the convent for the novena?”

The question was direct and sharp. She hesitated to reply.

“When, Vittoria? Think and tell the truth.”

“This evening,” she replied, with an effort.

“This evening? At the ball?” he insisted, still more sharply.

“This evening at the ball,” she assented, growing very pale.

But pity, sentiment without strength, was already extinguished in Marco’s heart, and there was substituted, as in every heart unjustly suspected, a dull and cruel indignation. He shrugged his shoulders, took his fur coat and hat, and left with a dry, “Good-night, Vittoria.”

She had no strength to reply. With difficulty she closed the door of her big room where she was alone, desperately alone. She dared not weep, for fear that he might return and find her weeping, for fear that, not being very far away, he might hear her weeping.

XVI

Maria Guasco wrote thus to Marco Fiore—

“Marco, this sudden and unexpected letter will not surprise you. You know already that it is not a love letter, because our souls united and understood themselves too intimately in that past which can never return, and they were too much agreed in feeling the irremediable end of their love for a sentimental misunderstanding ever again to happen between us. If anybody else, a stranger, were to lean over my shoulder, and read the first word written, he would at once have no other thought but this: ‘See, it was natural, she is writing to her lover, she has never ceased to love him.’ Let it be so. Not a short time has passed since we separated freely and voluntarily, overcome by anguish, but stronger than anguish itself, since the reason for our ardent and free union was at an end. Since it is now May it is nearly two years ago. It is a year since you married Vittoria, when, placing her little hand in yours, she will certainly have pardoned your long infidelity and desertion. Well, my friend, no one about me believes that I have ceased loving you with passion, not even those who know me well, such, for instance, as a faithful friend like Flaminia Colonna, not even a would-be lover like Gianni Provana, to give another instance. No one, and especially my husband, Emilio Guasco; he does not believe, can’t believe, never will believe that I have ceased to love you passionately.

“This is the cross that I have been carrying for a year, at first with energy and Christian courage, sustained by a burning desire for expiation, by a burning desire to repair the horrible suffering inflicted on others, to heal all the deep evil inflicted on others, and in fact with the great and lofty hope of giving all the happiness possible to the man who deserved it. Marco, how happily I embraced my cross at first, and how I suffered with humility and simplicity, like a child that feels it deserves all its punishment, or some self-effacing creature who performs every deep act of contrition! You know my pride, Marco; you know that it has always been my weapon of defence and attack in this war of life; you know that my pride has taken the place of many virtues and that, as it was perhaps too great and imperious, it formed also the source of all my sorrows. Well, Marco, I swear it, and I know you believe me, that I have every day thrown this pride at my husband’s feet, and my heart has been prostrated in an almost continual prayer for pardon. To accomplish what I had set myself for you, to accomplish all my vow of reparation I suffered so joyfully, but so bravely. At every fresh sting I did not bind the bleeding point, and from every new wound I let my blood gush forth, glad to suffer, glad to expiate, glad to be able by my secret and open sufferings to unfold and complete all my expiation, rejoicing to reach the goal of being a consolation to Emilio, of being, as of yore, the giver of his happiness. I have been intoxicated with the sacrifice, Marco, but now my intoxication has vanished. Alas, my friend, I see and know that it has been useless! My repentance has been in vain, and so have been all my acts of contrition, and the lowering of my pride. In vain, too, has been my desire to do good. Emilio is unhappier than ever, and I alone am the cause of his unhappiness. It is impossible for me, I swear, to make him happy even if I lived a hundred years, even if I died to-morrow. In life or death I can do nothing more for him—nothing, nothing.

“Listen, Marco, and see if it be not all irreparable. I didn’t understand at once, because I was infatuated with my fine hopes and desires of doing good; but now I know that all is irreparable. Do you know how long my husband’s pardon lasted? The fraction of an April evening in which he pronounced the sacred words which should absolve, cancel, and redeem. Immediately afterwards he despised himself and me, and the act of pardon seemed to him one of hypocrisy and lying humiliation. Later, when in one of our more furious crises, on reminding him that a Christian pardon is an act of renewed esteem, that Christian pardon should destroy the sin and purify the sinner, and that such an one should be loved as a new soul, he replied brutally: ‘Exactly; but Jesus who founded pardon was not married to an adulteress.’ What am I to say to him, Marco? The man loves me, longs for me, but at the same time he hates me. Never for an instant, understand, can he forget that I betrayed and abandoned him, and that for three years I was yours. He spies on me and makes me spy. He scrutinises every glance, he watches every action of mine. If I speak to him he doesn’t believe me; if I am kind he refuses my kindness. If my pity breaks out he understands at once, like all morbid hearts, that it is a question of pity and not of love, and he rejects my pity. He wrongs me and you with vituperation, and asks me to love him with passion as I loved you. But I can’t lie; I can’t, I can’t. I have never lied, and if I were to do so for a minute to save him and myself he wouldn’t believe me. What am I to say; what am I to do, Marco? I have said all; I have endured everything, and I don’t want to—I can’t—add anything else, my friend. I can’t write everything; my mind refuses to raise certain veils of shame. Let us leave it, let us leave it. My cross is so heavy on my shoulders that I am on the ground and breathless. What shall I say? What shall I do? Hasn’t all my repentance been useless? Hasn’t all my dedication been useless? And useless every abnegation? Whatever shall I do to-night? Whatever to-morrow? The man whom I have returned to comfort is, as far as I am concerned, in a state of sorrow and implacable agitation; this man whom I imagined so ingenuously and sweetly to make happy again, in spite of my sufferings, is still, and always will be, unhappy. After a terrible year, Marco, after a year of every experiment and attempt, in which I have consumed my will and weakened my energy, after a year in which I have seen all the good which was accumulated in my generous mind miserably dispersed, and day by day the sacred trust of doing good dissipated, I cry to you in my sadness and impotence, in my weariness and discouragement. I ask you whatever I shall do, Marco, with myself and my life, since it is of no further use but for evil? What shall I do with myself, inept for good, inept to give joy, and so involuntarily and fatally capable of evil?

“I am so lonely, Marco. When he is here he regards me with desire and anger. Both sentiments crucify and torture me, but I daren’t repress or combat either sentiment. I have become what I never was, a creature without will or object, a passive and resigned creature—I! I! think, Maria Guasco, a creature of resignation! Often he avoids me for days together, and I don’t know what to do with my dried-up and deserted existence. I do nothing, never, because I fear that all may be for the worse, even when he ignores me—ignores me! Sometimes he leaves Rome and goes away for two or three days, for a week. I don’t know where—in his distrust he won’t say. I don’t know when he returns, as he doesn’t wish it to be known. He enters suddenly and looks for me, as if he must always find me in sin, and I am always paralysed just as if my nerves had been cut, just as if a single gesture of mine may be an offence, or the pretext of an offence to him.

“I am so lonely, so lonely.

“In this Casa Guasco, in this Rome, in this world, Marco, I am more lonely than ever woman was, and I cry to you, not as a lover, not even as a friend, but as a soul which was once mine while mine was yours, I cry out my impotence, anguish, and mortal solitude.

“Marco, I am afraid of myself: I know myself. If the hand even of an enemy is stretched towards me with the impetus of unexpected sympathy, my soul at once trembles with emotion and opens its inviolate doors, and abandons itself with tenderness and enthusiasm. If a person who loves me ill-treats me or offends me it is impossible for me not to rebel; all my pride invests me wonderfully and magically with a steel cuirass, and I feel I love no longer, and I disdain the love of the other one who knows not how to love. I am capable of breaking a heart, two hearts, my own and the other’s, with a violence which nothing can stop. You know me. You conquered me with your youthful grace, with your sincere passion mixed with gentle languor, which conquers the proudest and most reserved souls. Never once did you offend me, never once, perfect friend and perfect lover, pleasant and sweet to dream of and remember. In those three years, passed together, my simple and impetuous character, so sincere and yet inflammable, found every sentimental delight. Our short life was beautiful, beautiful with unspeakable harmony, and we could separate full of sorrow, but still without anger or a single bitter thought of each other.